Again, Dangerous Visions Part 14

To simply state that Ray's story is a zinger and needs no further defense than its quality would be the wise course for me here, but as I have never been known to exist in a territory of wisdom, I'll go on and make a few comments about censors.h.i.+p, about protecting those who need no protection, about hypocrisy, and about "dirty" language.

Those of you who've heard these things need not attend. The test afterward only counts for half your grade.

In any case: having traveled around the country a good deal these past few years, lecturing at colleges and high schools, I've found that while people under-thirty are no less susceptible to slogans and simplistic answers than their over-thirty counterparts, on the whole on the whole they don't have the same hangups about language and topics of forbidden discussion to which their elders subscribe. When I was nineteen I was still a virgin, but when I pa.s.s a high school now, and see the fifteen, sixteen and seventeen year old girls, I am struck by the resemblance to a casting call for they don't have the same hangups about language and topics of forbidden discussion to which their elders subscribe. When I was nineteen I was still a virgin, but when I pa.s.s a high school now, and see the fifteen, sixteen and seventeen year old girls, I am struck by the resemblance to a casting call for Irma La Douce Irma La Douce, and I am hip to the fact that young people are getting it on s.e.xually much earlier than when I was their age. I think that's all to the good. Times have changed. The Pill and ma.s.s communications dissemination of hygienic information have made most of the restrictions against premarital s.e.x invalid and outdated. Young people are reaching each other in some very natural, normal ways that were verboten verboten to generations past, and along with that tacit acceptance of the body and its many uses, comes an acceptance of language. It is, for instance, virtually impossible today to shock kids by a discussion of masturbation. Everyone knows guys m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, and so do girls. If it comes up in conversation it's an accepted, like television or the jumbo jet. They grew up with it, and all the taboos about even owning up to the fact that you play with yourself strike them as pointless and hincty. to generations past, and along with that tacit acceptance of the body and its many uses, comes an acceptance of language. It is, for instance, virtually impossible today to shock kids by a discussion of masturbation. Everyone knows guys m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, and so do girls. If it comes up in conversation it's an accepted, like television or the jumbo jet. They grew up with it, and all the taboos about even owning up to the fact that you play with yourself strike them as pointless and hincty.

Which, perforce, brings me to Ray Nelson, "Time Travel for Pedestrians" and the hypocrisy of protecting those who need no protection. Ray's story deals, in small part, with the concept of masturbation as a triggering device for time travel. Its inclusion here, as well as publication of the stories by Piers Anthony, Richard Lupoff and Ben Bova, not to mention just the t.i.tle t.i.tle of the Vonnegut story, promise trouble with bluenoses. Understand of the Vonnegut story, promise trouble with bluenoses. Understand please please, these stories are not to me "dirty" or "offensive" in any way. My contention is that nothing nothing should be forbidden to a creator in the pursuit of an idea. But I am not fool enough to think these stories will slip by unnoticed when the hawklike eyes of the NODL and Citizens for Decent Everything get their white sheets on. should be forbidden to a creator in the pursuit of an idea. But I am not fool enough to think these stories will slip by unnoticed when the hawklike eyes of the NODL and Citizens for Decent Everything get their white sheets on.

We had some of this, as I've said, with DV. In fact, for almost three years we could not get an edition contracted in Great Britain, because the publishers kept turning the book down as "unpublishable." In the light of subsequent books released with ease in England, this now seems wholly ridiculous, but when we first acquired an English publisher, Leslie Frewin, we insisted the book be published as it stood, in its entirety, without deletions or concessions to censors.h.i.+p. Frewin agreed, but when the book was about to go to press, I learned that they were dropping the Theodore Sturgeon story because it dealt with incest, the Philip K. d.i.c.k story because it postulated G.o.d as a Chinese Communist, my own story because it used the word "f.u.c.k" and because it was clinically descriptive of a slaying by Jack the Ripper, and several others, including a story by Miriam Allen de Ford-on grounds I've yet yet to be able to name. Naturally, they were enjoined to cease publication, and the book was yanked away from them. to be able to name. Naturally, they were enjoined to cease publication, and the book was yanked away from them.

Fortunately, a more reliable and (one would presume) daring publisher in London, David Bruce & Watson, bought the rights and have published Dangerous Visions Dangerous Visions in two handsome volumes. But this was not the only instance of outright fear on the part of reprint houses to pick up the book. In Germany we were stuck with a wretched house, Heyne, who not only dropped stories without permission, but cut all the prefatory material, altered t.i.tles, changed copy beyond the normal considerations of translation into German, and in all botched DV hideously. (I have taken steps to insure there will be no repet.i.tions of this with A,DV, but a pending lawsuit against Heyne is the residue of lack of foresight initially.) in two handsome volumes. But this was not the only instance of outright fear on the part of reprint houses to pick up the book. In Germany we were stuck with a wretched house, Heyne, who not only dropped stories without permission, but cut all the prefatory material, altered t.i.tles, changed copy beyond the normal considerations of translation into German, and in all botched DV hideously. (I have taken steps to insure there will be no repet.i.tions of this with A,DV, but a pending lawsuit against Heyne is the residue of lack of foresight initially.) I report all this in the (probably) vain hope that those who have nothing better to do with their time than worry that someone else will read what he wants to read, will think twice before pulling A,DV from library shelves or lobbying against it in their Sat.u.r.day afternoon purity meetings.

For the rest of you, who can be shocked only by Calleys and Mansons and repression and violence, when you read this story you will more than likely say, "What the h.e.l.l was all the shouting about? It isn't offensive. Is this Ellison on the hype again?" To you I say, these words were intended for the backward, the frightened, the s.e.xually and emotionally constipated who exist in vast numbers out there.

And I'm sure this long preamble will surprise Ray Nelson, who never thought his story would be a bone of contention. Which brings me, at long last, to Radell Faraday Nelson himself, and his personal statistics, herewith proffered in his own words: "When I was about fifteen years old I remembered being born. I didn't know that's what I was remembering until much later. There were no words in the memory, just the feeling of being squeezed rhythmically again and again. It wasn't unpleasant.

"I was born in a hospital in Schenectady, N.Y. on Oct. 3, 1931 at (for those who are astrologically inclined) 2 a.m. I was the fruit of the union of mixed RH factors, and my head was too big for my body. I looked like, they tell me, one of those beings from the distant future, from a time when the body has all but wasted away from disuse. But I lived. I have one brother who lived, too. And many sisters who were stillborn.

"Sometimes I think my sisters are near me, whispering things to me, guarding me from harm. I picture them covered with fine soft womb hair, all hunched over with their noses on their knees, floating just at the edge of my field of vision so that I can almost see them but not quite.

"As a child I was carried from place to place by my parents, not seeing the world around me too much, but talking to beings that only I could see. We traveled from one state to another, following my father's work, and as I ran, dreaming, along a stone wall on the edge of the Grand Canyon, I struck my head against a branch and almost fell over the cliff. I still have the scar, just above my left eyebrow.

"The best scar on my body, however, is on one side of my lower stomach (the right side) where my appendix was removed. I had had a bellyache for a long time but I was very brave about it and as a result almost died in the last minute operation that was performed on me after I collapsed on the basketball court at high school. I couldn't do anything rough for over a year after that for fear I might open up again, so I discovered reading. I read science fiction and Little Literary Reviews, neither of which left any visible scars, at least on my body.

"That was how I became a science fiction fan and hippie, though that was before the word hippie had been invented. I was deeply religious and everybody hated me because, when one of my cla.s.smates stole a ballpoint pen in a drugstore, I went back and paid for it. They left many little scars all over my torso, particularly the a.s.s. There's another interesting scar on my left forearm, while we're on the subject.

"That's where, after I graduated from college and was working as a silk screen printer in Oakland, California, I held a candleflame under my arm and cooked the flesh until it turned black, in order to show that the spirit need not be troubled by the sufferings of the flesh. Fortunately the friends of mine who were present had promised in advance not to turn me over to the mental authorities. It was interesting to watch the scab form and then, a few months later, crumble and fall away to reveal the image of a perfect egg in white skin on a field of tan.

"There are many other marks on my body...such as the little brown dots of various shapes all over me. I never noticed them until I dropped acid. Can you imagine that? Here I was, covered with little brown spots and I didn't even know it, then I expanded my consciousness and there they were. It was then that I noticed that my skin was also covered with a network of tiny diamond shaped lines, as if I were made of crystal, and that my flesh was everywhere touched with subtle blending shades of color, like coral. I don't know anything else about myself to speak of, since most of the things I've done have not marked my flesh and thus I can't be sure that they aren't false memories, like the events upon which the story, Time Travel for Pedestrians' is based, according to my a.n.a.lyst."

He may not know anything more of himself to speak of, but Your Dauntless Editor, up to his gunwales in Nelsonia, has a few more vitalistics. First, he is the co-author with Philip K. d.i.c.k of a novel t.i.tled may not know anything more of himself to speak of, but Your Dauntless Editor, up to his gunwales in Nelsonia, has a few more vitalistics. First, he is the co-author with Philip K. d.i.c.k of a novel t.i.tled The Ganymede Takeover The Ganymede Takeover, he had an absolutely sensational story in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction a few years back, called "Turn Off the Sky," and he has written full volumes of material for amateur magazines, not to mention his cartoons which were a staple item of "fanzines" during the years he was a science fiction fan. a few years back, called "Turn Off the Sky," and he has written full volumes of material for amateur magazines, not to mention his cartoons which were a staple item of "fanzines" during the years he was a science fiction fan.

And Ray is a cla.s.sic example of how science fiction, the only kind of fiction that does this, brings up its own new generations of writers from the ranks of amateurs. The list of Big Name SF Writers of today, who started out as fans is endless-Silverberg, Brunner, Benford, Hoffman, Bradbury, Lupoff, Carr, Asimov, Knight, Pohl, Blish, Tucker, White-and both A,DV and The Last Dangerous Visions The Last Dangerous Visions will showcase many of them. will showcase many of them.

A discussion of fandom is here improper, yet a few words from Nelson of the days when we were both fans, seem nostalgically appropriate, so once again: "I remember a little cafe just outside Detroit.

"You and I were there, and George Young and all those other truefans, and we were all underage and we were all (except you, who don't drink) drinking beer and playing the electric bowling machine, and the manager came around and started asking for I.D. cards, and you had on a suit and tie and a large, literary-looking pipe, and when they came to you, you said, 'They're all right. I'll vouch for them.' And they didn't ask you for your I.D., though I believe you were the youngest one there.

"You just stood there drinking ginger ale and smoking and looking like our legal guardian.

"That's what we really are, Harlan. Feuds, the National Fantasy Fan Federation, letters to the prozines, mimeo ink under the fingernails, dreams of the Hugo while high on corflu (which you actually have gotten, at last, old superfan), articles typed straight on stencils, frightful poems and worse fannish imitation pro fiction, costumes at cons and musical beds, hateful monster movies that we just can't resist, Seventh Fandom, talking philosophy all night in greasy spoons, and that whole wild scene.

"I'm not just me, and you're not just you.

"Whenever I open my trap, the little microcosm that produced me is speaking through me, as if I were a ventriloquist's dummy. If you look down my throat you'll see, way back by the tonsils, the tiny figure of Claude Degler proclaiming in a piping voice, 'Fans are Slans.'

"So write anything about fandom, anything at all, and that will also be about me."

And so that future historians, coming to this book as a reference, will have all all the facts, Ray Nelson... the facts, Ray Nelson...

Is a graduate of the University of Chicago (1960) where he majored in liberal arts and received his B.A. He has an Operation and Wiring Certificate for IBM machines from the Automation Inst.i.tute (head of the cla.s.s, 1961) and is familiar with the IBM 514, 522, 077, 403, 407, 604 and 632. He is presently employed as a Machine Accountant a.s.sistant with the University of California.

He was a translator and administrative a.s.sistant to a French author named Linard in Vesoul, France from 1957 to 1960. He has held jobs as a silk screen printer, sign writer, cartoonist, IBM machine programmer and operator, Great Books salesman, fork-lift truck operator, beatnik poet (one slender book of poems published, ent.i.tled, Perdita: Songs of Love, s.e.x and Self-Pity Perdita: Songs of Love, s.e.x and Self-Pity) (named for his first wife), movie extra, Abstract Expressionist, interior decorator (with a paint mixing stick in one hand and a bottle of Jack Daniels in the other), Dixieland banjo player, folknik guitar player and singer, b.u.m, and etc.

He briefly attended the Art Inst.i.tute of Chicago, and The Sorbonne, has lived in or visited all the states in the original 48, plus Canada, Mexico, England, and all the nations of free Europe. He is married to a beautiful Norwegian girl named Kirsten, whom he met while living in Paris. They have a son named Walter and they live in El Cerrito, California.

Married, speaks fluent French, student at The Sorbonne, a father...now I ask you, censors and trembling uptights of the world, is this this the sort of man who could write a dirty story? s.h.i.+t, no! the sort of man who could write a dirty story? s.h.i.+t, no!

TIME TRAVEL FOR PEDESTRIANS.

Ray Nelson .

Masturbation fantasy is the last frontier.

When we travel to other planets we won't find much that we can't see or guess at from here, but there are things so strange we can hardly get the fingers of our minds around them that are closer to us than our own skin. Martin Esslin said it, in The Theatre of the Absurd: The Theatre of the Absurd: "In a world that has become absurd, transcribing reality with meticulous care is enough to create the impression of extravagant irrationality."

Have you ever seen those photographs in magazines of familiar objects taken from an unfamiliar angle or from very close up? It's hard to recognize even such an everyday thing as the end of a cigarette when you see it up close. Why is this true? Because you never do look at things, not really. The closer a thing is to you, the less you examine it, the more you take it for granted and ignore it. On TV you learn all about the private lives of the famous, but what about your own private life? What do you know about that?

What do you really know, for instance, about the stag films projected on those dark night flights into your own private lost continents, projected against the inner surfaces of your closed eyelids when you sit in the c.o.c.k Pit and grasp the Joy Stick in a sweating hand? There's no movie reviewer to tell you whether the film is good for you or not. Perhaps the plot, if written down, would seem rather idiotic, yet this sort of film, that you project for yourself and yourself alone, seems to hold you spellbound. You return to it again and again, never growing weary of repeating the same arbitrary details over and over.

What do you think about when you jack off, or when you "make love"? Is it torture? And if it is, are you the tortured or the torturer? Is it leather clothes? Or rubber clothes? Is it high heels? Or do you dream of dressing in the clothes of the opposite s.e.x, or even of trading bodies with the "loved one"? Is your mother there watching you in your mind, or your father, or someone who once rejected you? Is G.o.d watching you, condemning you? Is it silk? Nylon? Huge heaving b.r.e.a.s.t.s or wiggling rumps? Or is it the mouth of the womb itself, giving you a bearded kiss or spreading wide open to allow your return to the soft, warm darkness from which you came? Is it little girls or little boys, great round eyes fixed upon your hand as you slowly unzip your fly?

Are you thinking about it now? Is the picture once again flickering before your eyes? If it is, then this time look at it, long and hard. Examine it as if it were a masterpiece of art. Meditate on it as if it were the words of a great teacher. For it is the one thing in the universe that you have made for yourself alone, and not to impress someone else or to gain the approval of the church, the government, or the "respectable community." It may well be the only doorway that will ever open to allow you entrance into your own inner self.

Why do you hang back? Haven't you always thought Socrates was so frightfully wise when he took as his motto, "Know thyself"? Come. Let us enter. "It isn't as easy as all that," you may say. And you're right. There's something blocking your way. Let's put it a little more poetically. There's an angel guarding the entrance, with a flaming sword. He's been there a long time, but he is never tired. Angels don't need to sleep. You'll have to trick him, or drug him, if you want to get past.

I chose to drug him.

I went to the Five-and-Ten at the local shopping center and bought some very ordinary flower seeds. The pusher was a middle-aged Catholic saleslady in the garden department.

I think her name was Eve.

Then I went home and took a hammer and pounded the seeds to powder. I kept them in their packages while I pounded, so that they wouldn't fly all over the place. I had to sift them many times through a tea sieve before they formed a fine enough powder to suit me. Then I spread the powder over the surface of a dish of strawberry ice cream.

The angel in my mind touched me with fear, standing between me and the ice cream, but I knew from the Bible that if you fight an angel and win, the prize can be very great sometimes, so I ate it anyway. The ground seeds tasted like sawdust.

Then I went upstairs to my bedroom, where I had a double bunk all prepared for the occasion. Beside the bunk was a tape recorder on which I had recorded my own voice reading, over and over again, the First Bardo from the Tibetan Book of the Dead Tibetan Book of the Dead as translated by Timothy Leary. That's the chapter all about Ego Death. The as translated by Timothy Leary. That's the chapter all about Ego Death. The Book of the Dead Book of the Dead was the "In Thing" at that time, if you recall. was the "In Thing" at that time, if you recall.

I lay down on the lower bunk.

From there I could see, scotch-taped to the lower face of the upper bunk, a Hindu hypnograph I had put up there some months ago when I had used it to soothe a toothache through hypnosis. As you can see, everything was "programmed." Did I tell you that I once was an IBM computer programmer?

I turned on the tape recorder and relaxed, listening to my own boring voice droning on and on, waiting for something to happen. (I had "tripped" before, but never with such elaborate preparations.) After a while something did happen. I got sick to my stomach.

I ran down to the bathroom and knelt before the john and threw up once, twice, three times. But it wasn't unpleasant, as it usually is. It was good. It was more than good. It was ecstatic. I was throwing up with my whole body, holding nothing back. It was an o.r.g.a.s.m, or at least what an o.r.g.a.s.m can be when it's good, when n.o.body is likely to bust in on you or when n.o.body is saying "Shhh, someone might hear you."

So I knew I was high.

And the light was different, too. You know, sort of bluewhite, as if everything were under water on a bright day. And the flickers of flame were silently dancing on every polished surface.

I lay down again.

The tape recorder was still talking.

G.o.d, I sounded pompous and stupid on the tape!

But still I decided to co-operate with that idiotic other self of mine who had set up this elaborate farce. Like, why not?

I looked at the hypnograph above me, at the dot in the middle you're supposed to concentrate on, and the voice on the tape machine said "Ego Death." I couldn't seem to catch the rest of it. "Ego Death. Ego Death. Ego Death."

Then it was only, "Death. Death. Death. Death."

"For Chrissakes," I thought, in momentary terror. "This is a trap!"

The angel was laughing now, but he was dark, and huge, and monstrous, and I knew that angels and devils are really the same. They are angels if you are on their side and devils if you're against them.

I sprang up, soaked in sweat, and tore off my clothes until I stood naked in the center of the room, panting and licking my salt lips. The t.i.tles of the books in my bookcase seemed to be speaking to me, and it was all about death that they were speaking.

I took hold of my d.i.c.k. It was stiff and hard.

I felt safe, holding it.

I lay down on the lower bunk again, slowly, gently milking Old d.i.c.k with a practiced hand.

I looked at the hypnograph. Portions of it were starting to black out from time to time, winking out of reality and back again. The voice on the tape must be obeyed! The voice on the tape was the voice of my angel, perhaps even the voice of G.o.d.

"Death," said the pompous voice of absolute authority. "Death. Death. Death."

Then I remembered my favorite masturbation fantasy, the one where I am a girl with beautiful long black hair being f.u.c.ked by a man with a beard. In an instant the fantasy took hold and I could no longer see the hypnograph, no longer hear the voice that said "Death." I returned to the reality of the bunk in my room just long enough to grab a black candle I had intended to burn later, after dark. I looked at it wildly for an instant, then thrust it brutally up my a.s.s as the room I was in and some other room, where I was that girl with the long black hair, flickered rapidly in and out of my consciousness. The angel was trying to hold me back (Was there something protective about the clawed hand he laid on my arm?) but I shook him off and fell out of twentieth century America into...where? And when?

But who cared when the bearded man was so wonderfully rough, thrusting so deep up inside me, kissing my shoulders, my arms, my b.r.e.a.s.t.s? To be pierced! To be run through, to be stabbed deep again and again by that hard knife of blood-bloated fles.h.!.+ Oh my G.o.d! How good it was!

My head was suddenly full of German. I was German. I was in Germany.

And there were other men and women in the room. I could hear them shout and laugh and struggle. I could smell the stink of bodies long unwashed and sweating. The air was hot and wet and close and full of smoke from torches stuck into the walls that threw dancing shadows on the ma.s.s of naked and half-clothed bodies that writhed about me.

Now another man was mounting me, and then another.

Oh, my G.o.d, it was good!

And at last the Great One came.

The Great One was a man wearing the skin of an animal.

Or was it the spirit of an animal wearing the body of a man?

"My Lord," I whispered to him.

With a savage snarl, half-rage, half-tenderness, he threw me to the hard earthen floor of the hut and entered me, and it was painful but it was good. The drug in my blood make it good. The Great One was so huge in his d.i.c.k he almost split me in half, but still it was good.

Then it was morning and I wandered away from the hut, still naked, dancing aimlessly, without rhythm, through the tall, dew-wet weeds. The sun was just coming up. The birds were singing in the autumn trees. n.o.body was with me. I came to the coven alone. Alone I left. Marriage is for Christians, not for those who remember the Old Religion, not for a girl who is the wife of the G.o.d or the wife of all men or no men. I sang a song against marriage as I walked up the hill.

From the hilltop I looked down on the village and the church in the center of it. Perhaps I was cold. I know not. The drug kept me warm. I could have stood naked in the snow with the drug in me and not felt the cold.

How small the church looked, down there, how small and weak. In their book the Christians claim they once healed the blind and lame with a touch, but if that's true, why can they do it no longer? I can do it. We can do it. I laughed at them, prisoners in their safe little town, for they could not even walk the woods at night, as I could, for all that lives is my friend and their enemy.

Great power is given to the free! The power to cure...or kill, with a glance of the eye.

I felt weak. Dizzy.

And this was not right. The dancing with the Great One was more restful than sleep. They know the Great One's wives, down in the town, by the lightness of their step and the song on their red lips. The Christians know us and are afraid. Their skins are pale and they are always sick, knowing not how to eat and drink to live long and f.u.c.k merry.

But now I was sick. I was sick! How could that be?

I felt then, for the first time, the wetness on my leg. I looked down and saw the blood running from my c.u.n.t down my legs. My blood, and my power, and my life, were running out, and so quickly!

"Oh, must I die so soon?" I said softly.

For when we die we know it. The body tells so many things to those who listen to it. But my angel said, "Your sacrifice was not good."

"Not good?" I cried. "I burned my own newborn babe to the G.o.d tonight!"

"Not as one who gives a priceless gift," said the dark angel, "but as one who rids herself of an unwanted burden. As one who gives garbage to the G.o.d!"

"No! No! It's not true!" I called out.

The angel saw my lie and only smiled. "The Christians made you ashamed," he said. "Ashamed of being a mother with no husband."

"No!" I shouted again, but it is useless to shout against angels.

"I tell you this," said the angel. "If you falter in your faith, if you listen to the Christians and become ashamed, I shall turn my face away from you and the world will be given to them instead. There is a trial in the other world between the G.o.ds, and you are the jury. I give you knowledge and freedom, while my Brother gives only commands. If your body dies, it is nothing. You'll soon be back in another body. But if your faith dies, the case will be won by the Tyrant, and you and I shall both die the second death from which there is no return."

"No," I cried a third time, for now the fear of death was coming on me. "Help me! Don't let me die!"

"You are losing me," said the angel softly. "Remember. Remember when you were on earth before."

"I remember nothing! Oh, save me, angel! Oh, save me, angel!"

But the angel was gone.

I wandered down the hill toward the road.

I climbed over a fence of loose-piled stones.

I cried and sobbed and tried to stop the blood with my hand, but it flowed steady and only made my helpless fingers red and sticky. The flies were after me now. I hate flies.

I reached the road, but I was too weak to go on, so I half-fell, half-knelt in the sand. Now I no longer cried. Crying uses precious energy, and I had so little of that left.